'It's a dream job': Sundance Wicks hired at Wyoming after one season as UWGB men's basketball coach

GREEN BAY – Sundance Wicks had a successful year in his first season as the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay men’s basketball coach, but there won’t be a second one.

Wicks has accepted the head coaching position at Wyoming, which opened last week when Jeff Linder left to take an assistant job at Texas Tech.

It’s a homecoming for Wicks, who is from Gillette, Wyoming, and spent three seasons as an assistant under Linder for the Cowboys from 2020 to 2023 before being hired at UWGB.

UWGB will receive a $705,000 buyout after the recent contract extension Wicks signed that made him the highest-paid coach in school history.

“Obviously, it’s a dream job,” UWGB athletic director Josh Moon said. “Does the timing suck? No question, but that’s the way this business is.”

Moon will look to act fast in replacing Wicks. It is already late in the offseason and the team still has three scholarships remaining while continuing to build its roster for next season.

Current players also have 30 days to enter the NCAA transfer portal. The portal has closed, but the NCAA grants the window for players whose coach leaves for another school.

Although anything is possible, Moon doesn’t expect to do a national search the way he did last season before picking Wicks.

“I would expect us to have this figured out in the next week,” Moon said. “Getting through today and then getting with our team, and then circling back and seeing how quickly and effectively we can get this done.”

Moon said he already has been in contact with potential coaches.

He did not rule out any option, including promoting assistant coach Pat Monaghan.

The other finalists from last year’s search also remain available. The list includes former Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky coach John Brannen, radio host and basketball analyst Doug Gottlieb, former UWGB standout Ben Johnson and Hillsdale athletic director John Tharp.

With a coach in place sooner than later, Moon is hopeful the new leader will be able to retain as many players as possible.

“That’s the goal,” he said. “I think, at least for a good number of the guys, Green Bay means something. Take the coach out of it, Green Bay is to their core a special place. They want to be here. I really believe that. Now, in this world, who knows what happens?

“But I think we do have a core group where some of the regional guys want to be at Green Bay. That could change, but I sure hope guys would want to play for this institution and play for this community still.”

There also is a question of what happens to the group of current assistants. Along with Monaghan, it includes Nic Reynolds, Jordan McCabe and director of basketball operations Adam Owens.

McCabe, the former Kaukauna standout, just joined the team earlier this month and arrived here in large part because of Wicks.

UWGB’s director of player development, Rahmon Fletcher, will not be back. That already was known before Wicks left. Fletcher is believed to have accepted another position at a school, although it has not been announced.

Fletcher did not respond to a text message last week about his future.

“You have to let multiple steps fall in place here, kind of in order,” Moon said about the future of the staff. “So, no different than the women’s search we recently went through. We will kind of sort that out at the end of this week and where all that lands.

“Let’s get the leader in place, and then we will work on how that staff shakes out, and what Sunny is doing out west and how that staff shakes out.”

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Wicks talked at times this season about players sticking around at one school to perhaps build a legacy the way former stars such as Tony Bennett, Jeff Nordgaard and Keifer Sykes once did.

Now, just like some of the key players he recruited here who entered the portal after the season, he is gone after one year.

“Very supportive, it checks all the boxes for him,” Moon said. “But it’s really not about Wyoming. Mountain West is a top five conference in the country, arguably. To be able to go and make that kind of climb in a year says a lot about Sunny but also the job he did here.

“I think you have to look at it as the Mountain West is no joke. It’s Wyoming, and then the added piece that it’s his home state. It’s a place he loves. I know it was hard for him. But he’s basically skipping multiple steps (up the coaching ladder) to get to this step in the Mountain West.”

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: UWGB men's basketball coach Sundance Wicks hired at Wyoming